This transcript has been edited for clarity and checked against the available source transcript and recording. Filler, false starts, and obvious transcription errors have been corrected without changing the speaker’s meaning.
James: Hello, and welcome to Graduate Theory. Please welcome to the show Joe Wehbe.
Joe: Thanks very much, James. Good to be here.
James: It’s fantastic to have you on, mate. You’re certainly someone I look up to and someone who’s really inspired the creation of this podcast. So it’s very cool to have you on and hear your insights because you are certainly very knowledgeable.
Seth Godin’s Endorsement#
James: You’ve done a lot of things, so I’m looking forward to this. One thing I want to start with is the book that’s just come out, 18 and Lost. It’s a fantastic achievement. We can talk about the book and all that stuff, but I want to start with the blurb on the back from Seth Godin. How did you get this guy on the back? What was your process? What’s the whole story behind it? It is quite cool to have him there.
Joe: It is very cool. I’m very lucky, but it obviously wasn’t accidental either.
For anyone who’s not familiar with him, Seth Godin is very prominent as a thought leader in marketing, education, the post-industrial world, careers and work. He’s written about 20 bestselling books, started a bunch of cool companies and has a very clear and meaningful message.
So that’s who he is, if anyone hasn’t heard of him. I did a course at the organisation he co-founded. They co-founded the altMBA, and then this other organisation, Akimbo, evolved around it, I believe. It’s a very alternative education company.
I did the course thinking I’d meet great people, and I knew that people like him were behind it. So I figured there would be lots of relationships with this organisation beyond just learning some good stuff in the one-week course. It was called the Emerging Leaders Program.
If I hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have met Liam, a mutual friend and collaborator of ours, and that’s how I met you. So there you go. In the same way, I knew we were working on the book because I cared about education going into it, and I was curious to see how they did things.
So it was a learning opportunity for me in that sense, to see the model they used. I knew they had so many useful people in their community. I always planned to do the course, see what it was like and then add value to their organisation where I could. I hosted catch-up calls afterwards, gave a lot of generous feedback and obviously stayed in touch with people there. In the end, I had good context at the organisation. They knew about the book, and I explained its mission and why I thought, because it was about education, that an endorsement from someone like Seth would go a long way towards helping us catalyse the book.
An endorsement like that doesn’t necessarily sell books. People don’t hear about it and then come and find the book, but the credibility helps a lot. It was also really nice because we did it with a group of people. That was basically the process.
I don’t know if everyone’s now going to start doing a bunch of Akimbo courses because I’ve said that. Maybe they will. I also got very lucky because there was no guarantee. That’s why I was very strategic about it, obviously, but being genuine along the way is integral. I genuinely enjoyed it and got so much out of it.
Like how I met you and everything again, that was one of the beautiful things that came out of that.
James: That’s a super interesting story. I guess it’s one of those things where you do one thing—like that stuff you talk about with the doors, right? Doing this course opens up opportunities that maybe you didn’t expect when you first signed up.
Joe: For sure. If I was just trying to do the whole thing of, “Hold on, I know that guy’s in that company, or they know people, and I’m only going to do it for that,” then there’s a bit of risk. If it doesn’t come off, whatever effort you put in is wasted unless you learnt something. But if you get a lot out of the experiences you pursue, and they help you meet people who can move what you care about further, that’s what I concentrate on because it’s very holistic. You get a lot out of it, not just that one thing.
James: That’s interesting. I agree, and I think that’s a good point about the genuineness of asking something like that and being involved. You joined the course because you wanted to get value, and then these kinds of things came out. It wasn’t the real reason you joined, but it was an extra effect afterwards.
Joe: I think the whole idea is that you want to be in rooms with great people. That’s what I’ve learnt. I rarely used to take up experiences like that when I was a bit younger.
It’s not always the right time. The name of this podcast is pretty indicative of its theme. For people early in their career, maybe in the gap between finishing university and getting into the workforce, if that’s the average listener, their position is very different to mine now.
I have specific things that are my focus, like education. I work on things related to education and careers, so it’s deliberate. But it always makes sense to be in good rooms with people who also care about that. Being able to find more people who agree and align with what you care about is always useful.
You just don’t know what will happen in the field three or five years later. A relationship is such a good investment, and I knew I was going to get a lot of relationships out of it. That’s what attracted me. Seth Godin was probably the moonshot, and I was very lucky he helped.
I didn’t speak to him; it was all through the organisation. In general, I got so many great relationships out of it. I knew I was going to get that for myself, but there was also the concept of adding value. If I’m in there adding value and being genuine, they’re going to get something out of me.
It’s mutual and reciprocal. It should always go both ways, which is a really obvious idea. Get something out of it for yourself, but also make sure they get something out of it. Leave everyone better off for having talked to you, and you will get a lot back. That’s really my approach to everything, and so far it really moves things faster.
James: That’s cool because, particularly with networking, I was thinking about this today.
Sometimes when people say, “You’re going to go out there and network with people,” it’s as though you’re trying to trick them into becoming friends with you so you can ask a favour and then leave them. You’re trying to climb this ladder of who you know so you can be the winner at the end.
Whereas, when it comes from that kind of place, I think it’s easy to spot when someone’s trying to use you to get a favour and isn’t offering anything. It’s much easier to be friends with someone when they’re helping you and you’re helping each other. It’s much more natural that way.
Joe: It really is. It’s not always easy to like networking. I listened to a podcast the other week, and the host said to his guest, “You’re the gun at networking.” The guest replied, “Don’t call me that, because everyone hates that word. I don’t think of it that way.”
Networking has connotations. Different people think different things when they hear the word, but stripping it back, the fundamental idea at its core for me is that people are the ultimate resource.
Honestly, I’ve told you that story and explained my approach of always trying to add value. But if I’m on Twitter or hear a name, I definitely think, “Damn, if I knew that person, I could do this.”
I could get the message or the book out better. It’s hard to switch that off; it’s actually pretty human. I definitely have those thoughts. But then you start moving towards, “All right, let’s be strategic about how I could get in touch with them.”
Then it’s, “I’d have to create value for them.” You’re always reminded that you are your actions, not your thoughts. As long as you come back to the healthy way of doing it, the filter and feedback loop mean you almost don’t have a choice.
It’s actually really hard to get things by being transactional. A transaction is just an exchange for goods. You don’t need to love the local baker. If you give them money, they’re happy to give you bread. It’s transactional.
It doesn’t have to be a good relationship, but it can be. People know when it’s transactional. Is Tinder transactional? Is it a hook-up, where there’s an exchange of goods, or is it genuine? You can’t ask for too much too soon in a dating interaction; you have to break it down into steps.
Someone isn’t ready to marry you when they first meet you. If you coldly suggest that you have this deep relationship, and they get bombarded with requests like that, you get ignored. Instead, break it down into steps and meet people where they are: “All right, what would interest someone like this right now?”
What’s something simple they can say yes to? That’s opening the door. It’s easy to leverage people—and leverage can be a dirty word, like networking—to gain advantages and resources from people you have a relationship with.
It doesn’t have to be an exchange because you’re friends. You mentioned my real estate experience. In real estate, as in any business, people who are happy to refer clients are gold. You don’t necessarily have to pay them to refer clients: word of mouth and referral partnerships are gold.
What I found was that the people who ended up giving me business were great friends, or I became great friends with them. With the people we weren’t really tight with and didn’t align with, it was never as effective. When you like someone, you also have trust with them.
Trust is really important when you’re handing someone over. “I don’t need to be paid for it; just look after them.” If you make an introduction, the other person should be respectful. That’s what I’ve learnt through experience.
Ultimately, in the most productive relationships, you end up getting along really well. That’s what makes them sticky. You can ask a friend for something you can’t ask a stranger for because you have a relationship, but the online world dilutes that a little bit.
Sometimes we forget, but it all comes down to genuine relationships and genuine relationship-building.
James: That’s so cool. I think that’s a great point because, as you were saying about relationships, you’re not going to ask someone to get married on the first day. Once you get along and both like each other, you can start to ask more things and do more stuff together.
There are many parallels between dating and business or networking that I hadn’t realised. I think that was a great example.
Adam Grant: 3 Kinds of People#
James: One thing we spoke about before the podcast was Adam Grant’s book. You mentioned the idea that there are three types of people in networking, friendships or whatever: givers, takers and so on.
Could you elaborate on that a bit further?
Joe: I’d love to. The book, Give and Take by Adam Grant, aligned with many things I’ve thought and written about, which is why I loved it. He talks about givers, matchers and takers. Takers always ask, “What’s in it for me?”
There always has to be something obvious in it for them to be willing to help. For example, if you said to me, “Joe, come on the podcast,” and I was a taker, I’d need to see something clear in it for me: “Am I going to get more clients?”
“Am I going to get more leads or exposure? Am I going to get some of those things? All right, I’ll come on.” Takers try to take as much value as they can from you with little regard for whether it goes in the other direction. It’s, “I don’t really care about this James guy.”
“Whatever, if I can go on there and get more credibility or business clients.” Matchers, or traders, need an even exchange of value in both directions, and at roughly the same time. We’re doing some promotion for the book at the moment, and someone introduced me to a guy who has a podcast.
I thought, “All right, can we have a conversation? This is what I care about and what I’m trying to do.” He said, “You can come on my podcast, but I see you have a podcast too. Maybe I can come on yours.” That’s a matcher: “I’ll let you come on mine if I can come on yours.”
I said, “Actually, my podcast is solo. I don’t do guests, unfortunately, so I won’t be able to do that.” He said, “My podcast is slowing down at the moment, so I can do it, but I’ll send you the audio to edit,” or something. I thought, “Yeah, nah, not interested.” That’s an example of a matcher.
It has to be an even exchange and mainly has to happen at that point in time. Third are givers. Givers say, “All right, I’ll come on the podcast,” or, “I’ll introduce you to this person,” without an obvious or tangible return.
If I know someone who could be an incredible guest but might not respond to you directly, I can introduce you. But what’s in that for Joe? How does James’s podcast relate to me? In the big picture, everyone’s benefit is linked to everyone else’s.
People don’t really think about it. The giver probably isn’t as different from the others as we think, but it’s generally generosity that seems unattached to anything coming back, with no expectation of repayment. That doesn’t mean being completely selfless, like a doormat who lets people walk over them. There’s the selfless giver, and then there’s the pragmatic giver: “I can give this,” or, “I can’t do a week of podcasts with you, James. I’ve got a busy week.” At the end of the day, I’ve got to protect some things. That’s the traditional concept of givers in the book.
But the fascinating thing is that if you expand your thinking, think long-term and think very broadly, other people’s advantages normally become your advantages too. Part of the context is that you’re a member of our community, The Constitution. The better you go, the more people can understand, “Oh wow, there are communities out there that you can tap into to bounce things off and help you get set up with a project or anything like that.”
That’s good, and that’s the kind of world I want to live in: one where people do that.
It’s also very enjoyable and meaningful to contribute to someone who has direction, ambition, dreams or anything like that. It’s meaningful across the board, so I do get something out of helping someone like that.
I know that people have felt the same way about me. The giver concept is almost a bit tricky because what probably changes is the delay, or how clearly you can relate the benefit received by the giver to the gift given by the giver.
I don’t know if that makes sense, but I gave it my best shot. That philosophy makes all my behaviours make sense because a rising tide lifts all boats. We all have aligned interests.
James: For sure. I’ve heard a similar thing about giving as a business idea. Gary Vee had that book called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, or something like that. A lot of businesses do that, whether it’s on social media or elsewhere, where they give you free videos on YouTube or free content about a topic to develop the relationship. There’s no expectation of a return with those.
They’re not expecting you to donate money afterwards, but I guess they are secretly hoping that when they release something, you care about them and are invested enough in what they’re doing to buy their course or sign up for whatever it might be.
Joe: The other thing with that comes back to dating. If you say to someone, “Would you like to go on six dates with me?” they’re thinking, “Do I want to go on six dates with this guy? I’m not sure.” But if you ask whether they want to go on one date with no expectation of a second, third or fourth, they can commit to that.
What that strategy does—inbound marketing and all that sort of stuff—is what relationship-building does: it breaks things down to a small enough step that someone can commit to. If you’re trying to get in touch with a significant person in the business world, giving them a LinkedIn message or an email they can simply reply to is a great first step.
It’s better than having nothing and sending them a big pitch and a dump. That’s interesting to think about. Even with the people you’re talking about, I’m sure they hope people pay, but those who don’t end up paying probably still spread awareness of that person’s brand: “Hey, Seth Godin or Gary V has this free YouTube video. I’ll send it to you.”
If you’ve never heard of Gary Vee before, you’re now aware of him and have a relationship with him. It’s familiarity. How often do you land on a website and spend a thousand dollars with someone you’ve never heard of, on a product you’ve never heard of? Not that often. But if you’ve heard of them before, you’ve got that familiarity.
You’re more likely to buy from Gary Vee: “I see that guy everywhere. I’ll buy his course,” or, “I’ll pay him to be my media marketing manager,” or whatever. Again, it comes back to relationships. You see someone around a lot, have a couple of touchpoints with them and build trust.
James: Definitely. I think that’s super cool. You can relate it to your personal brand, which is not only how you’re perceived in person or online. Maybe you have your own Instagram for business-related stuff or your own website.
Your personal brand is also how you interact with people. What are you like when you go and watch the footy at someone’s house? This giving isn’t just for when you’re trying to network with someone, giving online advice or offering value in a business by releasing content.
It’s also about thinking, “This person said they were interested in coming to an event I’ve previously attended. Let’s connect them with the organiser.” Things like that can really positively impact people.
Joe: Majorly. I believe the way you do one thing is the way you do everything, and I notice that in so many ways. I even see similarities between how people play soccer and their work ethic. A lot of the people I play with are school friends or my brothers.
It’s hard to switch things on and off, and very hard to do it for a long time. Even though networking can be a dirty word, it’s one I’m happy to use. Every time I think about it, I conclude that the way to do it most effectively is, at the end of the day, to become a better person.
James: Holistically.
Joe: Definitely. One of the cleverest books of all time is obviously How to Win Friends and Influence People. The title makes you think, “How do you use all these dirty tricks and get your way?”
Not to spoil the book, but its whole premise is that, unfortunately, you’ve got to be genuinely interested in people. You show interest in them without expecting something, start there, and then things can snowball because they think, “That person is interested in me.”
It’s funny, but it’s also relieving. You feel, “I’ve got to get in touch and advance my career,” and then realise that, the whole way along, you can just be yourself and actually be the most effective. That’s not easy, especially today.
There are always shiny objects dangling in our environment, so it’s not always easy. I think being reminded of that as often as possible is powerful. The general call to action is the G-word: being genuine makes things flow and feel effortless because you can just be yourself.
James: Totally.
How you do anything is how you do everything#
James: I liked what you said about how you do anything being how you do everything. I’d heard that before, and I think it’s really key. I first heard it on a podcast many years ago. The guy said, “When you go to the toilet, how do you leave the bathroom when you’re finished? Do you make sure it’s cleaner than when you entered? When you wash the dishes, do you do a good job, or just do them well enough that the next person has to deal with your problem?”
These things aren’t just one-offs. Someone who cleans the dishes really well is probably also going to do other things in their life really well. I think that’s super important, and it’s something I now watch out for.
Even when I’m doing menial tasks, I ask, “How am I doing this?” It’s reflective of how I’m going to do things at work or complete a project. There might be little things that you think you don’t need to do: “That’s fine. I’ll just skip that bit.”
But it’s about putting things away in the right place. When you finish a project, are you going to check it a few times before sending it off, make sure there are no spelling errors and ensure everything is in exactly the right place?
Doing that extra one or two per cent in every little thing adds a lot to everything you do. I’m a big fan of that.
Joe: That’s a great thought. You’ve prompted me to rethink that for myself and get better at it, so thank you. I’ll be paying attention to everything.
James: Obviously, you can’t think of it all the time.
Joe: Absolutely, but it’s a very good frame. Even if someone listened to this and did that for the next day, that would be very positive. With all these positive attitudes or approaches, you think, “I’m going to do more of that,” and don’t always follow through. But over time, they all sink in and add up.
The long-term trend is towards being better in that way. I honestly think that’s a really great attitude.
James: I definitely agree.
Highlights from 18 and Lost#
James: Let’s go back to your book. This is quite a unique concept. I haven’t heard of a book written like this before.
Sometimes there’s one author and a couple of people who write the foreword, so there are three authors on the front or whatever. But this isn’t that. I think you have eight different people who each wrote a section of the book. Tell us how that came about.
Joe: Scott is my high school friend. We did nonprofit work together, and then he created his own startup, Espresso, which is a great up-and-coming Aussie company. We’ve always been interested in education, starting with our own very self-directed projects—things we chose to do ourselves.
We found that we learnt so much. There are great places to learn, and you get a lot out of them. We both went to uni. He loved uni; I didn’t have the best time, but you undoubtedly still learn things. I think the most effective ways to learn, especially in this day and age when you can create things more easily than ever before, are projects and choosing your own challenges.
Our mission together is to catalyse that approach to education and make it more accessible. There are a lot of pieces to pull together, even though it’s logistically easier. The problem is that it isn’t packaged up for people. With your podcast, you have to decide to do it, find the guests and figure out how to do it.
At the start, you’re asking, “How do you package it up and make it easier?” That was the inspiration for the book. We care about education, so we themed it around something useful for young people leaving high school.
That’s a pretty big social problem. We wanted to make it a learning experience for us and the co-authors. I also wanted to learn for myself. It’s the first book I’ve published, and it will be self-published. I wanted to learn, “How do I do this self-publishing thing? What’s involved?”
I really didn’t know. I’d been writing stuff for ages, so I thought, “This is good for me too.” We found friends—literally people we knew who we thought would be interested. We intentionally chose young people and young Australians. If I’d known you a year ago, I might have asked you, for example. Maybe in the future.
It was literally like that, showing that anyone can do it. 18 and Lost is about that awkward journey after leaving high school. Most people have a lot of challenges or things to think about and process, even if they get through it unscathed.
It seems like everyone goes through something at that time. A big problem is that we aren’t very good at ferrying people from the high school environment to the rest of the world. We let them swim across very choppy waters and see who survives.
That’s not the kind of world I want to live in. The broader ambition was to ask what would help. We shared the stories of eight very different people, and there’s a surprise ninth as well.
Sharing all those stories lets you think, “That’s what it was like for those people.” You can’t summarise everyone’s experience. There’s no single experience or way of doing things, but we thought giving eight or nine different examples could help. Maybe one will resonate with someone.
One of those stories might make them think, “I felt that way too, and it’s not just me,” because we don’t often talk about these things in depth. I wrote about leaving high school, my struggles at university, not pursuing the things I was actually interested in, trying to take a safe road and how that felt.
I called it a six-out-of-ten life: not so bad that you make a change, but not so good that you enjoy things. You’re riding in the middle. To be honest, a lot of my family and friends wouldn’t have known that stuff until they read it because it doesn’t really come up.
That’s why we wanted to take a storytelling approach. Ultimately, the concept was pretty cool, and we’re proud of it. We gave everyone five weeks to write their chapter, which created the accountability to get through writing a book.
It reduced the workload because each person only had to deliver one chapter. They were writing their stories, which was pretty intimidating for most people. I think the group really helped with follow-through because when other people rely on you, it creates much more incentive.
If it’s just me on my own and I don’t do it, no one’s going to mind, as often happens with books. I’m very proud of everyone’s chapters and the writing. One thing I care about a lot is helping more people learn what they’re capable of by writing books.
It’s a good challenge because it’s very tangible: “I did this, and I became an author.” It’s a great journey, and I encourage as many people as possible, especially young people, to take it up. We’re also trying to facilitate more people doing this sort of stuff in our work.
James: For sure.
Were there any key themes among people leaving high school or uni? As you said, leaving high school is a very choppy time. You have to pick one thing to do, and almost everyone is thinking, “I’ve got no idea.”
What are some key themes from the book, including common problems people had and how they dealt with them?
Joe: Great question. Towards the conclusion, I unpacked the five big themes I noticed. I’d also love to hear what readers pick up that I didn’t. One key theme was whether people were true to their intuition—what they felt they should be doing and what their real interests were at the time.
The authors who didn’t follow those key interests seemed to struggle on an emotional and somewhat psychological level. For example, I wanted to be a filmmaker but ended up studying psychology.
I didn’t do much film because I lacked confidence and didn’t know how to be proactive about getting experience, among many other reasons. I didn’t feel great at that time because there was a gap between what I felt I should be doing and what I was actually doing with my time.
When that happens, you normally don’t feel great. In contrast, Scott realised that the best thing for him was probably to start with engineering, and he made that choice himself. I was looking for a safer path. Some stories are more like Scott’s, where people chose their own way.
Others are more like mine: “This is what I think I should be doing,” rather than, “What do I really want to do?” It wasn’t even the top thing I’d pick, or I picked it for the wrong reason. I picked it for an extrinsically motivated reason, meaning the motivation came from outside.
“It will impress everyone if I’m an engineer or a psychologist. I’ll make a lot of money.” That’s extrinsic—a reward that comes from outside. Intrinsic motivation is, “I’m so into psychology,” “I’m so into engineering,” or, “I love the people I’m meeting while doing this.”
That’s much more intrinsically derived, so that was probably the biggest takeaway. Another of the best themes was that no one predicted what they’d be doing by the time they sat down to write the book. That includes Jordan, our oldest author.
He’s 27 and drew a nice graphic in the book showing all the different things he’s done. He has had the most diverse career of anyone I’ve ever seen, so he definitely didn’t predict what he’d be doing. Even Gabby, our youngest author, intended to go on a gap year last year, but COVID happened, so she started studying law. She didn’t anticipate becoming the author of a book at 18.
The unpredictability is nuts. I didn’t predict that I’d end up trying to do entrepreneurial projects; I left school wanting to be a filmmaker. No one had a clear idea. It’s the big lie: you pick something and think, “This is my path,” but it’s unlikely to remain your path because most people make some sort of pivot.
Making a pivot is probably healthy because it means you’re discovering things. You’re not growing if you aren’t discovering things you didn’t anticipate. If you can see everything ahead—when you’ll learn, the age when you’ll get a promotion—and it’s completely linear with no surprises, it feels safe.
But it’s not really what you want; it’s what you think you want. Not knowing is actually a bit healthier, but feeling comfortable not knowing is the challenge. Some people are dead set and laser-focused: “I’m just going to do that, and that’s all.”
“I’m going to be a doctor,” or whatever. They might end up doing it, but I think you should always have your eyes open to other things because you’ll learn. You can keep being a doctor, lawyer, builder or whatever it is, but discover new things within that.
That’s what makes it a journey and makes it exciting. Another pattern is that everyone comes out, as you said, asking, “What do I want to do?” and feeling anxious because we put them in an environment where they feel they should know. That’s our culture now.
Everyone is made to think they should know. In my opinion, not knowing isn’t the problem; feeling that you should know is more concerning, which is a bit of a mouthful. To bring this full circle, I couldn’t tell you what I’ll be doing one year from now.
I can’t predict what ventures I’ll be involved in, where I’ll be or how much money I’ll have in the bank. Everything I’m doing has such open loops, and so much could happen. Maybe the prime minister will read the book and say, “I want you to do this program.” I don’t know.
There could also be negative things. Maybe all the business stuff crashes. But I’m not really worried because I’ve had enough experiences to learn that you can learn so much from the worst things that happen, and life is actually pretty simple at the end of the day.
Everything we try and all the achievements we pursue are like scoring an extra goal when you’re already ahead. That’s my philosophy. There isn’t much to worry about because I normally feel satisfied with who I am and how I treat people. I try to remember that this is the most important thing, not where I am by 26 or 27 or any of that nonsense.
That makes whatever happens pretty okay in the long run. That’s the difference between someone who’s 18 and thinking, “Shit, what am I going to do with my life?” or finishing uni and asking the same question, and me sitting here thinking, “I wonder what I’m going to do with my life.”
James: That’s a great way to put it.
Joe: I don’t have any more certainty than they do. That’s the point.
James: That’s really cool. I like what you’re saying because there’s a distinction between having your eyes open, with the light in your head switched on, and being closed off.
You’re seeking and discovering things, even if you’re simply exploring what’s out there in your job or at uni, rather than saying, “This is what I’m doing. That’s it,” and closing yourself off to all possibilities. I think the world is open and ready to be discovered.
It’s much more fun and interesting when you can go out, try stuff and pursue your passions and interests.
Joe: Definitely. It’s probably different between generations. For people our parents’ age, it was very different, but we have a cultural hangover.
It wasn’t necessarily worse. In many instances, they had fewer choices—definitely fewer choices on average—so they would pick a pathway. “If I can go to uni, that’s pretty good because that will normally get me a good job.” That made sense. Now it’s so different.
University is still there, but you have 500 million other things you can do. The internet changes your capabilities, but there’s a fraction of the awareness that there should be about that. The future is also changing with technology, AI and all those scary buzzwords about how all your jobs are going away. Things will change and adapt, but I think people will be able to adapt.
There’s a real opportunity now to approach this as a discovery period, rather than a period for feeling successful and safe as quickly as possible. That’s constraining, which I don’t find healthy. There’s a broader set of possibilities, but that can obviously be intimidating.
It can be overwhelming, and it’s hard to come up with a linear path. Seth’s endorsement—this blurb he wrote on the back of the book—reads, “The big lie is that people have figured out their future. In this powerful and honest book, you’ll discover that it’s a journey, not a plan, and that you can lean into the possibilities that lie ahead.”
That’s so well put and is a great quote irrespective of the book: it’s a journey, not a plan. At the end of the day, I always say that when I look back, I measure my quality of life in stories, not money, because in the end, there will be an end.
I don’t know when, and I won’t be counting how many dollars I have in the bank. The best currency is having all these stories and all this cool shit that you look back on and did. Obviously, having enough money to eat, do stuff and reinvest in other things is pretty good along the way too.
It’s part of the picture. I’m writing a book that is my life, but forwards. A story has to be interesting.
James: That’s so cool.
You are going to die#
James: I like what you briefly touched on there: you’re going to die someday.
You want to have these stories to tell, and that’s something I often think about too. I was listening to a book the other day called The Comfort Crisis.
It’s a great title. This guy does a massive challenge where he goes into the forest with two of his hunting friends, some snacks, heaps of luggage, tents and whatever else. Their mission is to hunt an animal.
I think they call it a caribou. I don’t really know what that is. I’m guessing it’s similar to a deer.
Joe: Everything is similar to a deer.
James: They get this thing, bring it back and eat it as pretty much their sole source of food, then come back after a month.
It’s a very interesting book. One thing he discussed was a particular country. I think it has a low wealth or GDP index, but it’s one of the happiest countries in the world. One theory is that people there are taught about death from an early age. They’re reminded that they can die, and they really focus on it. They have a plan for where they want to die and what it will look like, and they’ve considered it in great depth.
Some people in the Western world get right to the end and think, “That’s what happened. I ended up here.” I think it’s key to consider death, whether you’re choosing a career or deciding whom to seek out.
What are you going to spend your time doing? If you reflect on the fact that you’re planning your life and will die someday, there’s urgency to doing these things. They aren’t going to happen by themselves. I think that brings a lot of clarity, especially to what you were saying about extrinsic and intrinsic motivations.
Some of the extrinsic motivations might start to fade away when you realise that death strips them back.
Joe: Death strips them back completely. I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but my favourite question is, “What would you do if you had five years to live?”
What would you do differently? How would you live differently? It’s my favourite question. People often ask what you’d do if you had a day to live. Obviously, I’d say hi to James, tell my mum I love her, go to the beach and have a party. That’s too easy. But with five years, you still have finances to manage and ration over that time.
Yet it’s close enough that you can’t ignore it. You also have time to do something meaningful that will probably have an impact after you’re gone because you’ll be very conscious that you’re going to be gone. It sounds a little morbid, but I think it’s actually the opposite.
What’s morbid is that in the West, we put death out of the picture and deny it exists. Most people live as if they’re never going to die. When I look around, most people’s behaviour doesn’t make sense to me considering they’ll be dead one day. They might struggle for ten years just to get a mortgage.
If that’s an eighth or a tenth of your life, and the mortgage was the only thing you worked towards in that time at the expense of everything else that’s good about life, that doesn’t make sense. Everyone I’ve asked that five-year question has found that it strips back all the extrinsic stuff.
You aren’t worried about how people will look at you. Everything about human nature is about constraining attention because we have finite attention. So why do many people struggle even though this is logical?
In our world and environment, all the shiny objects suck our attention towards them. In the same way, social media always directs your attention to what’s in your feed, even when you don’t want to be scrolling on your phone. We don’t have that discipline, and it’s hard to apply it to everything you’re looking at all the time.
I have to remind myself, “Don’t think about that. Think about this.” Death, like everything else, constrains your focus, but it probably constrains your focus better because it’s reality. Death is the reality we’ll have to face at some point.
You can’t lie about that. Anything to the contrary is a big fluff ball—a distraction. I’ve heard stories about cultures that centralise and normalise death, making it clear: “These are the constraints, so what are you going to do?”
It changes everything. That question changes everything for me. This podcast is geared towards careers, and we talked about networking today.
It absolutely impacts how you think about those things. You think, “I’m not going to focus on doing everything in a transactional way. If I won’t be here in five years, I want that journey to be meaningful.”
You want it to be worthwhile, with good relationships, and you don’t have time for people who aren’t that. You don’t have time to think, “I just want to hang out with this person because they can get me this or that,” because you’re gone in five years.
I try to remind myself of that question as often as possible because it is a massive release. Even thinking about it again now—thank you for prompting me unintentionally—with everything involved in launching a book, it’s calming. It’s fascinating and definitely missing from Western culture in a big way. It’s not normally in career guidance books or high school, but I have a feeling it might be in the coming decades.
Technology, the digital world, crypto, flying cars and all these things are going to shift the world so much. It’s coming, and it will force us to rethink how we do many things. It will be fascinating to see how big those changes might be.
James: Totally. I think that’s super cool.
Joe’s advice for those starting university#
James: All right. The last question for you today, Joe, is this: if you were graduating from university again—or perhaps starting university; you can choose—what’s the one piece of advice you would give yourself?
Joe: The question we asked a lot around the book is what advice you’d give your 18-year-old self. I think I can say the same thing to both the version of me starting university and the version of me ending it: make the most of it; don’t settle for any less. I like that.
Even when leaving, whatever comes next, focus on what you have and make the most of whatever you can access and start with. At university, I didn’t make the most of it. I wish I could go back.
Not really, because I learnt a lot, and that made me more focused in life afterwards. Make the most of it. I think that’s it. Good question.
James: Perfect.
Outro#
James: Thanks so much for coming on today, Joe. It was a fantastic conversation and is much appreciated. If people want to find you on social media, purchase your book and all that stuff, where’s the best place?
Joe: I’m someone with many internet links, so I’m always very careful with this. I’ll concentrate on the book. It’s 18andlost.com.au, with the word “and”. That’s the best place for everything to do with the book, and a good door into everything I’m involved in and working on.
Other than that, I have a website and a podcast. They both have the same name, With Joe Wehbe. My last name is W-E-H-B-E, pronounced “Wehbe”. People can land on the website, which also has links to social media. I’d concentrate on those because I’m not very good at consolidating it all.